Tag Archives: The Thursday Review

At the beginning of the year, I had a goal. I wanted to write a book review for my blog once a week for all of 2017. And to my credit, I’ve gotten over a quarter of the way.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to finish.

When I made this goal, I thought that I’d be able to scrape through the first part of the year and, by the time uni ended, I’d be free to read as much as I want and get this done. That’s not the case.

Instead, three things have come together to drastically devour my spare time.

1) I’ve started writing for a second wrestling company, which reduces the amount of time I have for reading, which makes reviewing books difficult.

2) I’ve had a lot more assignment work than I expected. My four thousand word essay took a lot of time and attention and I also have a 15k submission to finish. Spending time reading when I could be doing that is self-indulgent.

3) I’m trying to find a day job. I had an interview last week and, if successful, that will also take up a good chunk of my life at present.

I will still try to write a piece of content for this blog to post on Thursdays from now until the end of the year, but until further notice, it won’t be The Thursday Review.

Thank you for all the time you’ve spent on my reviews so far. I love you all.

This week, we’re taking a break from Stephen King to dive into one of my favourite genres of book: the gory serial killer story. If it’s advertised with the words “The worst fictional killer since Hannibal Lector”, you’d better believe it piques my interest.

This time, though, I screwed up a little. I received this book from my mother and neither of us realised until after I’d read it that it’s actually the fourth book in a series. So how does Richard Montanari’s “Play Dead” (or “Badlands” as it’s known in the USA) hold up as an introduction to the series?

Did I like it? Well, if I tell you that I went to bed at ten planning to read one or two chapters and ended up reading until nearly one in the morning and finishing the whole book, does that answer your question?

Things have gotten on top of me a touch this week. I had my last two formal MA lectures and as such, opportunities to read and write have been thin on the ground. Despite this, though, I managed to once again dive into my stash of unread Stephen King and picked out “Dolores Claiborne”.

Here we are. It’s March 2017 and I’m about to review the last novel I have to read for my MA. Was it an amazing experience about which I’ll write positively? Or a terrible reading experience that I will lambast?

This week, I’m doing something a little different. All my reviews up until now have been books I’ve never read before. Today, though? In honour of a presentation I have to do at university on a book I chose, I’m going to be jumping into the way-back machine and talking about a book I first read several years ago: “Storm Front” by Jim Butcher.